Customer Reviews

Introduction to the Practice of Statistics: w/Student CD

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I have used Moore & McCabe for years but am using this edition for the first time and have a number of complaints:

1) One fairly minor problem is that the new color scheme is downright painful. This is even worse on the slides (but at least they did away with the modern art at the beginning of each chapter).

2) Speaking of slides: the Power Point slides are completely overloaded; were they written by a statistician or by Tolstoy?

3) The problems are scattered throughout the chapters rather than collected at the end

4) The publisher has still not provided an electronic version of the solutions manual

5) A number of the online multiple choice questions in the compass system package are broken (missing plots, typographical errors, etc.)

6) The authors made some debateable decisions, such as introducing the concept of degrees of freedom in section 1.2. This will probably be the first day of class of what is the first statistics class most students ever take.

7) Most changes vis-a-vis the previous edition are superficial, e.g.: switching the order of two chapters (both on the CD, not the actual textbook)

7) All the flaws of the previous edition (see my review there) are still present.

8) New edition => no used books. This means more money for the authors, but a far greater financial burden for the students.

The previous edition of this textbook is not perfect (see my comments there) but superior to this edition.

This is probably the worst text book I have ever used. Like the previous reviewers mentioned, there are very few "worked-out" problems. They give plenty of examples, but few solutions.

Also, the example problems in this book are complicated and involve large data sets. The book fails to transition smoothly from the conceptual to the practical. It unexpectedly jumps from the equations to multi-stage problems, and expects the reader to have a broad understanding of mathematical concepts prior to reading this supposed "introduction".

The homework section is beyond frustrating. About half the questions force the reader to flip throughout the book to look at charts, or even homework questions from the previous chapter. The information is difficult to access, and it creates a barrier to learning.

I would opt not to purchase this book if possible. Wikipedia does a much better job at presenting examples and explaining concepts.

My daughter's college stat class uses this book. Two weeks into the semester, I can say this is one of the worst math books I've ever seen. This has few worked examples. Homework problems make constant references to other areas of the book so there is a continuous back and forth. Questions are unclear. The authors assume a great deal of knowledge on the part of students - one has to wonder how many years (decades?) it's been since they were in an introductory classroom. Data sets are unnecessarily large - one problem has 76 data points to be manipulated without software. The same concepts could be taught with half as many. Even the layout is poor - small type face on homework problems which are crowded together.

For an into to stats, the authors seem to be going faster than what we understand. Even our professor agrees that this book is not useful and recommends Google instead. As we got into chapter 7, there are more and more practice problems that don't even include all the information needed to work the problem! Its nice that all the formulas are in the book, but it would be great also if it showed us how to use the graphing calculator. I've never really taken the time to write a review, but after spending countless hours actually looking up the correct info on the web instead of trying to figure out what the author is trying to say, I felt compelled to write an honest review. Our professor is still trying to get this book pulled. Now I see why.

This textbook is terrible, but if you're buying this book it's probably because you don't have a choice. I had to use it for my Stats class where my teacher didn't speak English very well so I was mostly relying on the textbook. It is impossible to just learn from this book. It does not explain anything. It shows you all these ways of finding some number to describe some set of data (although it doesn't even do that very well!) but it doesn't tell you why it is useful or what it tells you about the data. One cannot learn statistics from this book. All it's good for is problems.

This book is awful, one of the worst textbooks I've ever encountered. I'm a math major, so I know how difficult to understand the texts can be. This is so much more confusing than it needs to be. There is NO glossary of terms (which would actually, you know, be useful in a discipline where using the right words to describe the data is extremely important) and the index is so pathetic that you're on your own trying to find where a topic might be within the book. Examples are overabundant and distracting from the actual text, which isn't that well-written to begin with. It seems like the author just tried to make a textbook full of examples, but someone told him he had to add in some actual, you know, teaching, so he shoved it in wherever he could. I would never recommend this book.

Granted, I have a degree in math and was taking an intro to statistics course from the psychology department (ask my adviser about that one as it wasn't my choice). However, it was the first time I'd ever seen a statistics book that looked like a high school textbook. I think the text does a good job of discussing statistics in a way that won't put off a person who doesn't feel they're very strong in math - that is, they use a lot of descriptive text rather than a purely equation-driven presentation. They also discuss issues in statistical tests that you don't find in a math or engineering stats text, such as ways in which biases are introduced into "random" experiments, ethical issues the experimenter has to contend with, situations in which median might be a preferable measure of the middle, etc. The text is good for high school students or possibly undergraduates who have little to no previous experience with statistical concepts (i.e., it includes a detailed description of mean, median, and mode) and a hesitation to take math classes. I don't think it's appropriate for graduate level instruction regardless of the students' background.

I am now in my second year of using this book and I cannot recommend it. Its layout is dreadful, both on a page-by-page basis and in the order of chapters and concepts. Some key concepts are not defined once in the course of the book. The index, which you will have to use a lot because of the layout problems, has let me down frequently. Even the index itself is poorly laid out. The worst thing is that the book will spend a page trying to make a topic accessible by filling space with meaningless drivel before zooming past the bit of explanation that you needed. If your professor is difficult to understand (as is the case for me) you might miss large chunks of content unless you take the time to decode the work of Moore et al. A massive waste of money; even though I've got a library copy, I'm still frustrated.

this textbook seems "unfinished". it does not have a glossary which seems like a minor 'offense', however it makes it incredibly difficult to find a quick and sure definition for a term. the index isn't very helpful either in finding what you are looking for... i found it to be short and oftentimes unhelpful. i could get a quicker and more direct answer to my question by doing a simple google search.

additionally it is not very visually pleasing to look at on the inside. i have used calculus books before that were less dry than this one. i dislike the way the problems are numbered... for instance, for chapter 1 the problems in section one might end with problem "27" then the book will pick up again in section two with number "28".

not the best math textbook i have ever used.

Note that _all_ (or all but one) of the 5-star reviews of "Introduction to the Practice of Statistics" are reviews of Amazon's price and delivery! The critical reviews actually attend to the content of the book.

Like most texts, this one suffers from (1) having a captive audience (students) and as a result, a publisher that does _nothing_ to really improve the book, (2) terrible design, (3) uninspired presentation of what is, at best, a dry subject, (4) as many have noted, far too few examples to illustrate the substance of the text.

Sad.